As, during the hours that
were passed, the image of the forsaken girl had dissipated the
remembrance of the duties he had performed, and opposed the
contemplation of the commands he was yet to fulfil, so it now denied to
his faculties any impressions from the lonely scene, beheld, yet
unnoticed, which spread around him. Still, as he passed through the
gloomy streets, his vain regrets and self-accusations, his natural
predilections and acquired attachments, ruled over him and contended
within him, as sternly and as unceasingly as in the first moments when
they had arisen with the evening, during his sojourn in the terrace of
the deserted house.
He had now arrived at the extremest boundary of the buildings in the
suburbs. Before him lay an uninterrupted prospect of smooth, shining
fields, and soft, hazy, indefinable woods. At one side of him were some
vineyards and cottage gardens; at the other was a solitary house, the
outermost of all the abodes in his immediate vicinity. Dark and
cheerless as it was, he regarded it for some time with the mechanical
attention of a man more occupied in thought than observation,--gradually
advancing towards it in the moody abstraction of his reflections, until
he unconsciously paused before the low range of irregular steps which
led to its entrance door.
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